Preventing Genocide Blog

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Forty years ago, the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime marked the end of four brutal years of mass deportation, forced labor, and extermination, which claimed the lives of an estimated two million people. On this anniversary, Cambodia provided a fitting backdrop for the 14th Conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars aimed at rethinking genocide studies and prevention.

The Early Warning Project considers the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be the top country to watch at risk for mass killing onset in 2019, while we determined that the mass killing in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states has ended. The following report compiles our determinations for ongoing mass killings in 2018.

For the sixth year in a row, the Museum's Early Warning Project ran a comparison survey to solicit opinions on countries' relative risks of an onset of mass killing. These are the top 15 countries at risk for mass killing in 2019.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and Egypt top the list of countries most likely to experience a new mass killing in 2018 or 2019, according to a new forecast released by the Museum's Early Warning Project. The report’s release coincided with the launch of the project’s new website, including interactive data tools, accessible reports, and data files.

The Early Warning Project’s multi-method approach suggests that there is an urgent need to analyze and respond to risks of future mass atrocities in the DRC. In particular, Congo-watchers should think critically about how the upcoming election, and its outcome, might exacerbate atrocity risks throughout the country.

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group in Burma who have faced a long history of severe discrimination and persecution, including the denial of citizenship and repeated violence at the hands of Burmese authorities. On December 3, 2018, the Museum announced it has found compelling evidence that Burma’s military perpetrated genocide against the Rohingya.

To help the Simon-Skjodt Center’s Early Warning Project forecast atrocity risk in 2019, please participate in our annual pairwise comparison survey, an innovative opinion aggregation method, which presents countries head-to-head and simply asks respondents to choose which is more likely to experience a new mass killing in the new year. The survey will run for one month, until December 31, 2018.

Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, and Egypt top the list of countries at risk for new mass killing in 2018 or 2019, according to the Early Warning Project’s annual rankings released last week.